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feel like a spring in the hand. The top and bottom need to bend evenly,
else more wood gets shaved from the end that isn’t bending. Archery is
a very unbalanced sport, with one arm always pulling and the other
always pushing. Which arm pulls depends not on strength, but on the
dominant eye - the one that you use in a camera viewfinder. “You can’t
train the eye as easily as you can train the arm muscles,” says Nat.
Nat mostly teaches at the serious competitive level, from county level up
to the GB squad. The Oxford Archers have about 110 members, half
women and half men which is fairly unusual in the sport and is another of
Nichola’s legacies. Nat also coaches Oxford University, London
University and Nottingham University, plus other clubs and individuals.
She is away 1-2 nights per week, sleeping in her cosy van.
Nat was selected for England last year, and competed in the Home
Nations tournaments. But she needs to balance her own shooting with
the performance of her archers: if she spent too much time on perfecting
her own shooting, she wouldn’t have enough time to coach. Happily,
archery is a sport of experience, so people just keep getting better at it,:
at reading weather conditions, at knowing themselves, and coping with
the competitive environment. “Once you master the basics,” says Nat,
“the sport is about 90 percent mental. It’s all about persistence.”
By training, Nat is a historic buildings consultant. She writes reports
about the phasing of historic buildings: when various parts of the buildings
were constructed, how important each part is, and whether the parts can
be changed or not. She worked for the Diocese of Oxford (whose offices
were in North Hinksey) until three years ago, when she left to concentrate
on archery coaching full-time.
Nat and partner Kat own a wonderful two-year-old Norwegian Buhund,
Finn, who was second-best puppy in his class in Crufts and travels to
tournaments with them. Nat and Kat moved from Botley, where they had
lived for seven years, to Clanfield in 2014, where they have a
mini-smallholding. They grow vegetables in their garden and allotment,
raise chickens for eggs and meat, and manage a wood allotment. Nat
has just bought a forge so that she can make her own tools.
So when you next drive or cycle along the A34 and see the archery
targets set up at the rugby club, think of Nat, Kat, Finn, and how lucky we
are to have the Manchester United of the archery world in our parish.
Riki Therivel